Young Naturalists
Go Eat Worms!
Slithery critters mean mealtime for shrews, the ferocious pint-sized predators that inhabit the spaces under your feet.
Jason Abraham
Ever been up close to a bug or a worm? Maybe you were carefully watching its writhing flesh, whirling legs, or glistening slime, only to have an adventurous friend or sibling take one look and say, “Dare you to eat it!”
Gross! Probably not much of a decision—a fast reply of “you go first.” But for shrews, the intense predators that feast on all things slithery, grubs and worms mean suppertime!
Minnesota is home to eight species of shrews, each marked by a pointy snout, short ears, and inconspicuous but visible eyes. The largest are about the size of a mouse, and some weigh less than a penny—so tiny that biologists have trouble weighing them.
As one of the oldest mammals in Minnesota, shrews have ancestors that probably dodged dinosaurs in their long-ago pursuits of bugs, beetles, and other prey. Although all eight of the state’s shrews belong to the same family of mammals, they are uniquely adapted to their specific place in nature.
